Download the free Wired-at-Night Lab Test Guide that walks you through all four root causes talked about in this episode, the specific functional test that catches each one, and why your standard bloodwork has probably missed it entirely. thesleepdetective.com/wired


In this week’s episode of The Sleep Detective Podcast, I break down what’s actually happening when you feel exhausted but can’t switch off…and why the answer is often not what you expect.


You’ll understand:

  • Why your body can feel tired and alert at the same time
  • 4 imbalances that are driving that “second wind” at night
  • The exact lab tests that find these imbalances
  • And what actually has to change for your system to power down


I also share the story of a client who went from needing medication to fall asleep to finally feeling calm in his body again at night.


If you’ve ever felt like your body and brain just won’t shut off, this episode will likely hit home.


00:00 Wired at Night Intro

01:01 Matt’s Sudden Insomnia

02:31 Cortisol Rhythm Explained

03:44 Hidden Stressors Gut and Toxins

04:58 Neurotransmitters and Racing Mind

07:33 Hormones That Disrupt Sleep

10:42 Mineral Depletion Surprise

13:04 Why Minerals Get Depleted

13:43 Free Lab Test Guide

14:16 Matt’s Results and Recovery


Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] You're dragging through the day, counting the hours until bedtime, fantasizing about sleep, and then the moment you actually lie down, something flips, your mind turns on, your body won't settle. You feel alert and you're lying there thinking, how is this even possible? I was falling asleep on the couch an hour ago.


If that's you, you've probably already blamed cortisol, and yes, we're going to talk about cortisol, but here's what you might not know. Cortisol is just one piece of this. And even when cortisol is the problem, the question nobody's asking is why, because the answer is almost always never what you would expect.


I am Martha Lewis. I'm a functional sleep practitioner, and I've worked with hundreds of clients who describe this exact experience. Through functional lab testing, I find what's actually driving it, and it's rarely what they thought it was. By the end of this episode, you're going to understand exactly what's behind that wired at night feeling and what you can [00:01:00] do about it.


To show you what I mean, let me tell you about a client of mine named Matt.


Matt was 31 years old and had never had a sleep problem in his life. Then almost overnight, everything changed. He describes it like this: One week, he was fine. The next week he was lying in bed at night and just couldn't fall asleep. It started taking longer and longer, and then longer still.


He ate well, he worked out. He did everything right. He's one of the healthiest people I've ever worked with, and none of it mattered. He'd get into bed exhausted and then something just wouldn't switch on. he had anxiety that he never experienced before. This adrenaline feeling that he just couldn't explain his body simply would not power down.


The only thing that worked for him was a benzodiazepine, and at just 31 years old, he said, I'm in my early thirties. I don't wanna have to take that every night to fall asleep. That ain't right.


He went to traditional doctors, they ran standard blood work [00:02:00] and they told him essentially that some people just can't sleep. And he said, I'm going to them thinking they're the expert and they don't get my issue. Why can't I sleep? They don't know.


And that's when he found me. We ran functional lab tests, the kind that goes well beyond standard blood work and what came back told a very different story.


I am going to walk you through exactly what we found and more importantly, what it means for you If you're lying awake at night, feeling that same wired, restless, just can't switch off feeling. I.


So let's say you're doing everything right. You're taking time to wind down, you're off your phone, you're in bed at a decent hour, and yet the moment your head hits the pillow, something switches on.


Here's why.


Your cortisol is supposed to follow a very specific pattern high in the morning. That's what actually gets you outta bed and then tapering down throughout the day so that by the time you're ready for sleep, it's low enough for your body to wind down.


When that rhythm gets flipped, you get [00:03:00] exactly what Matt was experiencing. Exhausted all day, but then wired at night. And one of the tests I used to look for. The hormone zoomer. So it is going to show your cortisol pattern throughout a 24 hour period. It actually uses four urine tests throughout the day and six saliva tests, including one in the middle of the night, so we know what's going on at most hours of the day.


But here's what no one asks even if they're thinking about cortisol: why is cortisol high at night in the first place? That's a real question. Once you know it's high, well, you know, you can take a supplement to lower it, but that's just putting a bandaid on it. We need to know why it's actually high.


So when I looked at Matt's labs, he had pathogens in the gut. He had h pylori and a parasite. Your gut and stress response are in constant communication with each other. And so when their infections living in your gut, your immune system is quietly activated [00:04:00] around the clock, but especially in the middle of the night and so that's what keeps cortisol activated. And your body thinks this under attack because in a sense it is.


His labs also showed heavy metals, and this is where the liver comes in as well, because your liver is your primary detox organ. And so when it's overburdened with toxins like heavy metals, it can't do its job properly. And that toxic burden also keeps your body in this low grade stress state, which is going to drive cortisol up.


The test I use to look at this is called the toxin zoomer that looks at dozens of heavy metals, environmental chemicals, and mycotoxins, which come from mold.


So when someone tells me their cortisol is high at night, my next question is always what's actually causing it? Because cortisol is just the result of the problem. It's not the actual root, it's the signal that something else needs attention.


Now, [00:05:00] what if the reason you can't switch off at night has nothing to do with cortisol or stress and everything to do with chemicals in your brain? Think about what's actually happening up there at night. You have two forces working against each other. There are excitatory or stimulating neurotransmitters that activate your brain. And then there are inhibitory ones that act as the brakes. So for sleep to happen, the brakes need to be more powerful than those excitatory ones.


When the brakes are being overridden by the stimulating ones, it can go two ways. So either your calming neurotransmitters, things like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA are too low to do their job, or . Really elevated stimulating neurotransmitters like glutamate and histamine .


And so when I got Matt's results back, his dopamine was low. His five HTP, which is what your body uses to make serotonin, was very low. So his brain was running without enough of the [00:06:00] chemicals that it needs to quiet down and feel calm at night.


And here's what was surprising to him, is he didn't feel like he had a chemical deficiency, right? He felt anxious. He felt like his mind was racing. He felt wired. So he had no idea that that was the same thing, that that could mean that he had this chemical deficiency.


When your brain can't apply the brakes, it doesn't matter how exhausted you are, you're still going to be there wired.


And what depletes those calming chemicals in the first place? That's the real question we wanna ask. So chronic stress is a big one. Nutrient deficiencies. Genetics can play a role. Um, so is poor gut health because a significant amount of serotonin, melatonin, gaba, dopamine, are actually produced in the gut. So if your gut is dealing with pathogens or inflammation, your brain isn't getting what it needs to wind down at night.


I look at neurotransmitters, they are actually [00:07:00] included in a test called the gut Zoomer by Vibrant Wellness. So the gut zoomer looks at the overall big picture of your gut health, it's looking for a hundred or more good bacteria. It's looking for dozens of different pathogens. It's showing how much inflammation is in the gut, how well you're digesting food. It gives so much information about the state of the gut and as part of that, neurotransmitters are included in that test because the gut and neurotransmitters are so closely related.


Now, what if the thing keeping you wired at night started changing in your body years ago and you actually had no idea? Your sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, play a much bigger role in sleep than most people realize. And this applies to both men and women. It's not just about having too little; imbalances in either direction can influence your sleep.


So let's start with something called estrogen [00:08:00] dominance. I see this one constantly actually, especially in male clients. In men, it happens when estrogen is higher relative to testosterone. In women, estrogen dominance happens when estrogen is higher relative to progesterone. And in both cases it can directly interfere with sleep.


Estrogen is a stimulating hormone, and so we need enough to be able to sleep, but when it's too high, then the nervous system stays activated at night and can really cause you to be really hot at night , when you want to be winding down.


And so progesterone is that counterbalance against estrogen. It has this natural calming effect on the brain. It works on the same receptors as gaba, which is that breaking neurotransmitter that we talked about. So when progesterone is low relative to estrogen, the brain loses one of its natural sedatives, which makes it really hard to sleep.


Now estrogen also regulates body temperature. And this is what [00:09:00] happened to me too when my estrogen got too low As I'm approaching menopause, , I wasn't getting hot flashes or night sweats. I just felt hot, like it would be 63 degrees in my bedroom and I would have a sheet on and just feel so hot. That low grade warmth at night, that makes it impossible to get comfortable and stay asleep. So temperature regulation is something that I think a lot of people don't realize that can happen when hormones are outta balance and can really affect sleep.


Now about testosterone, low testosterone in both men and women is associated with poor sleep quality, more nighttime waking and that restless, unsettled feeling at night.


But high testosterone can also be disruptive. It can make you alert and hard to kind of power down.


So looking at Matt's results, his testosterone actually came back high and he'd assumed that that was a good thing. And in many ways it is. [00:10:00] We, you know, we also don't want it to be depleted, but when you're already dealing with depleted, calming neurotransmitters and gut pathogens.


Which are both keeping his body stressed. Then high testosterone is adding to that fuel at night. This is why I test hormones comprehensively from the start because a hormone imbalance that looks subtle on paper or in blood work can still affect sleep. It can keep your brain activated when everything else, when your body really just wants to rest.


And so the hormone zoomer that looks at cortisol is also going to look at sex hormones and how they're being broken down by the body. So get a lot of clues from that one test.


Now, here's the one nobody sees coming. You can have the best diet in the world, take care of yourself, work out, eat your vegetables just like Matt was doing, and still be really depleted in the minerals in your body. And Matt was exactly that person. He was healthy, he was active, he was doing everything right, [00:11:00] but when his results came in, his magnesium and calcium were completely depleted.


And so this is why this matters at night. I mean, we all know magnesium is so important for sleep, and that's because it's this natural relaxant. It calms the nervous system, it relaxes muscles and it helps regulate the neurotransmitters that we just talked about.


So when it's low, your nervous system stays activated instead of being able to calm down, and you can get that restless adrenaline like feeling that Matt described happened to him. This was the magnesium deficiency showing up at bedtime.


Now calcium works alongside magnesium to regulate nerve signaling and muscle function. When both are depleted at the same time. Your body simply doesn't have the raw materials it needs to calm down.


And those are the only minerals that are important for sleep. I more frequently actually see higher calcium, magnesium and lower sodium potassium. [00:12:00] And both those imbalances affects sleep.


So sodium and potassium regulate fluid, balance and nerve signaling throughout your body. They're also the primary minerals that your adrenal glands need to respond to stress and make cortisol. So when they're low, your nervous system can't communicate properly, and that shows up at night as restlessness, that waking, or that that wired feeling, that makes no sense given how exhausted you are.


So I often use a test to look at mineral status called the hair tissue mineral analysis. This really shows the balance of minerals together and it can show things being depleted long before it ever shows up in blood work.


So Matt said that when his magnesium and calcium levels came back up, the anxiety and adrenaline feeling at night just stopped. He said, even if I was struggling to fall asleep, at least I wasn't freaked out. Honestly, that was the biggest thing for me. So that was early [00:13:00] on, is he was slowly improving.


Now again, what depletes these minerals in the first place? That's where we, what we want to ask. So chronic stress is the biggest driver.


Your body burns through magnesium five times as fast when it's stressed. Same with sodium and potassium, because your, again, your adrenal glands need those minerals to function properly. And so the more stressed you are, the more it's using those up.


Poor gut health also means you're not absorbing the minerals from food that you're eating.


And if you're dealing with pathogens or toxins, your body's using minerals to manage that burden instead.


So it all comes back to the same picture. Everything is connected, right?


If you're listening to this and thinking, okay, but which one of these is actually me? Is it my cortisol, neurotransmitters, minerals, hormones? I made you something to help answer it. It's called the Wired at night lab test Guide. It walks you through all four root [00:14:00] causes that I just talked about, the specific functional tests that catches each one, and while your standard blood work has probably missed it altogether. You can download it for free at thesleepdetective.com/wired, and that link is in the description.


Now, back to Matt again. He came to me, he was 31 years old doing everything right, but lying awake every night wondering what was wrong with him.


His doctors had no answers. Standard blood work showed nothing, and the only thing that was helping was a medication that he did not wanna be taking for the rest of his life.


When we ran the functional lab tests, we found depleted magnesium and calcium driving that anxiety and adrenaline feeling at night. Low dopamine and serotonin, meaning his brain couldn't apply those calming brakes, gut pathogens and heavy metals were keeping a stress response activated around the clock, but especially in the middle of the night, and liver detox issues on top of that. Testosterone that was high, which [00:15:00] was also adding to the stimulation when he was trying to go to sleep.


None of this showed up on blood work, but all of it was affecting the sleep.


So within about a month of addressing what we found, the anxiety at night just stopped. He was able to get off the benzodiazepine and luckily he hadn't been on it for long, so it didn't take him a long time to get off of that. He no longer needed the this prescription medication to fall asleep. And he said that was a big deal.


He sleeps well now, most nights, no issues. And he said something that I think is really powerful. I went through a period where I thought, I'm never going to sleep again. But once you figure out what's going on, you'll be able to sleep again. And that's what the functional lab testing does. It stops the guessing and shows you exactly what's happening in your body so you can fix it.


If you wanna hear Matt's full story, I'll link his video right here. Go watch it if you want to hear [00:16:00] it in his own words as well, and his full experience being able to sleep normally again.

Listen and follow: Apple Podcasts · Spotify